Your health can be affected by a range of things that create your cumulative toxic burden. These include pesticides, herbicides, chemicals in the air and water, products used on your skin, and things you consume like alcohol, prescription medications, over-the-counter medications, and natural bodily waste. The important question is, how do all of these things affect your health?
The Body’s Toxin-Filtering Process
The body filters the toxins it is exposed to on a daily basis, but, depending on how many toxins the body is confronted with and its ability to process these “insults,” the toxic burden can, unfortunately, be overwhelming to the immune system. The body can only handle so much.
Toxins that aren’t eliminated are stored in body tissues and can build up over time, leading to a decline in health and the onset of disease states. Toxins can even disrupt your hormones and alter your DNA. The name of the natural process the body uses to eliminate toxic substances is detoxification.
Detoxification
There are two common types of detoxification. The first is related to a medical treatment that one who is addicted to drugs or alcohol typically endures as they are ridding their body of these substances. This process will continue until the majority of those substances are eliminated from the bloodstream. The second type of detoxification can be defined as the normal physiological process of removing toxic substances from the human body. As the main filtering system in the body, the liver is the primary organ to carry out the majority of this process.
The liver detoxifies by changing the chemical structure of many toxins, while the kidneys detoxify by filtering toxins out of the blood and into urine. The bowels also play a role in the removal of toxins as waste passes through the GI tract. When the body is unable to filter toxins fast enough, symptoms known as “detox reactions” can happen. A detox reaction occurs when toxins are removed from the body faster than the primary organs of elimination (bowels, liver, and kidneys) can comfortably remove them. Common detox reactions include headaches, brain fog, anxiety, irritability, nausea, skin irritations, or breakouts.
Toxins and Chiropractic Adjustments
In addition to toxins building up in the body’s organs and tissues, toxins can also accumulate in pockets of air surrounding the spinal cord. This is why you can sometimes hear popping or cracking sounds while receiving a chiropractic adjustment; you’re hearing these pockets of air releasing toxins from around the joints.
What types of toxins are released after chiropractic adjustments? These can be anything from metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury to industrial chemicals or inert ingredients that are often added to many lower-quality nutritional supplements. Furthermore, most prescription medications and over-the-counter medications have ingredients other than the active ingredient, which the body cannot use and needs to eliminate.
Chiropractic adjustment side effects are usually mild to undetectable and are associated with the toxins that are released through those adjustments. Common detox symptoms after chiropractic adjustments can include headaches, fatigue, or pain in the areas that were treated, though such symptoms tend to resolve in a day or two. The release of toxins in this way can be beneficial to the overall detoxification process as they make their way through the body to be excreted.
Not all patients will experience a release of toxins after an adjustment. But those that do can feel content knowing that they are helping to facilitate the elimination of toxins that will lower their total toxic burden.
Supporting the Process
With all the contaminants, pollutants, and chemicals in our environment these days, our bodies must detoxify greater amounts of toxins than they were intended to. That’s why it’s of great benefit to help lower that burden by eating organic fruits and vegetables, grass-fed/finished beef, and pasture-raised eggs, using essential oil-based cleaning supplies, oil essential diffusers rather than candles, natural skin care products, and simply being conscious of the amounts of toxins you’re being exposed to in your environment.
The lower your toxin burden, the easier it is for your immune system to function as intended. With 70 to 80 percent of immune cells located in the gut, a lower toxic burden allows the body to channel energy and resources into protecting you from infection and disease rather than struggling to heal the liver, kidneys, and colon that are overburdened by continually filtering through an abundance of toxins. It’s easy to see why detoxification support is one of the most important elements of any health and wellness program.
There are many detoxification formulas on the market, but unfortunately, a large percentage of those contain powerful laxatives that can be irritating to the colon. Rather than supporting your body’s natural ability to detoxify slowly over time, such formulas can promote detoxification at too fast a rate and, without providing supportive nutrients, leave you feeling fatigued and depleted.
Rapid detoxification can increase the likelihood of uncomfortable detox reactions that can occur if some pathways in the body become stagnate. This can also place a burden on other elimination pathways in the body leading to an inability to detoxify completely. A better approach is to cleanse detox pathways with gentle herbs, nutrients, and botanicals that support cellular function while also removing toxins.
MaxLiving’s Cell + Body Detox System
MaxLiving’s Cell + Body Detox System is an especially unique formula that helps support the body’s detoxification system beginning at the cellular level, then including the organs involved in detoxification.
Free radical damage begins the process that causes cells to destruct. Exposure to toxins can facilitate this effect. Cell Detox is a whole-food formula that contains powerful probiotics that can dampen this effect. It contains traditional organ system detoxifiers such as chlorella, milk thistle, and spirulina, along with antioxidants like glutathione, catalase, and superoxide dismutase to support the body’s defense against toxin-related free radicals from inside the cell.
Body Detox is a unique formula containing three sources of fiber: psyllium husk, flax seed meal, and glucomannan. Detoxifying ingredients contained in Body Detox like peppermint leaf, fennel seeds, ginger root, and fenugreek seed, along with activated charcoal, effectively bind to toxins and help the body naturally eliminate them. With MaxLiving’s Cell + Body Detox System, you’re supporting all the organs of detoxification and also supporting the process right down to the cellular level. There is no better way to support cleansing the body -from the inside out.
About the Author
Jini Cicero is a Los Angeles-based Strength and Conditioning Specialist with a bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology. With over 20 years of experience as a health, fitness, and nutraceutical professional, Jini is passionate about advancing natural medicine and optimal health. Whether she’s working with Hollywood celebrities or cancer patients, Jini uniquely combines exercise science, sports nutrition, and corrective exercise. As a speaker, presenter, and writer, her work has been featured in numerous publications, such as Shape, MindBodyGreen, and The L.A. Daily News.
